Devs can't be bothered with Nokia's Windows Phone – report Interest in building applications for the current generation of Windows phones from Nokia has plummeted among developers. Just a quarter of developers are very interested in developing apps for Windows Phone 7 devices compared to 37 per cent in the second quarter of this year, according to the latest Mobile Developer Report …
What with the functionality exposed by the developer APIs somewhat less than even the original iPhone, meaning that all you can really do with it is eye-candy. The devices themselves being so 'Meh' - the only differentiator appears to be the hot pink or cyan cases. And the real lack of confidence that Nokia/Microsoft can actually build a viable user base to make it worth targetting, I'm completely shocked by this news.
Yep, they run just fine when Microsoft takes them and trans-codes them to machine code so they CAN run on WP8. I would hardly say that WP7 apps run just fine on WP8. If the app is not on the marketplace, it won't be trans-coded and thus WON'T run on WP8.
I thought the apps will be compatible with WP8, and it's the other way around that's the (potential) problem?
So you write an app now and it works on WP7.5 & WP8.
You write an app in future, and if you use some new features, such as native C/C++, it'll only work on WP8.
Or did I miss something / get the wrong end of the stick?
"Since WP8 is not yet released, and the previous assumptions that WP7 devices would be upgraded to WP8 have proven false, it is probably best to assume the worst."
What assumptions? Show me any statement anywhere where Microsoft suggested at all that you could install WP8 on older WP7 devices.
On the other hand, they have actually stated that forward compatability is going to be the case and as you can actually grab the developer tools for WP8 and get stuck in now, you can actually see that it will be compatible. Why do you feel the need to post baseless assumptions where they spread and become misinformation? Can you not take a little care in checking your facts if you're going to write on a public forum?
I think there is a reasonable assumption that if you buy a $500 smartphone less than a year before a new version of the OS is out then the customer could reasonably expect an upgrade to be available.
If there aren't going to be any upgrades in the WinPhone world then people will wait for 8.1, or 8.2 or 8.5 or 9 .... or buy a competitor.
"Show me any statement anywhere where Microsoft suggested at all that you could install WP8 on older WP7 devices."
Show me where my statement implied they had. The word assumption would not be applicable if they had.
It would be reasonable to expect that if an operating system is being replaced, that the supplied phones would either have minimal software compatibility problems or an upgrade would be available. neither appear to be the case, so the buyers have been tucked up.
"Why do you feel the need to post baseless assumptions where they spread and become misinformation? Can you not take a little care in checking your facts if you're going to write on a public forum?"
WP8 is not released yet - Fact.
Microsoft have a long history of flexible goalposts. - Fact.
Therefore exercising caution until actual release is sensible.
If WP8 runs WP7 software unmodified, we do not even know how well it will work in practice.
Windows 95 was compatible with win 3.x programs, but you ended up with a dreadfully unstable system if you tried it.
On the other hand MSDOS programs usually worked quite well on it.
"Show me where my statement implied they had. The word assumption would not be applicable if they had."
Well if you're not claiming that MS in any way suggested that WP7 devices would be able to run WP8, then it seems unreasonable to blame them for people making such assumptions, yes? So either you think MS are to blame for anyone assuming this, in which case I continue my request for a citation, or you don't in which case I ask you why your criticising them for other people's assumptions that weren't based on anything MS said.
"It would be reasonable to expect that if an operating system is being replaced, that the supplied phones would either have minimal software compatibility problems or an upgrade would be available. neither appear to be the case, so the buyers have been tucked up."
Why is it reasonable to expect that hardware running a current OS will be capable of running a future OS? Who gave you this expectation? Is it normal to do that? As I understand it doing so on numerous Android devices is problematic. I was told that running a newer iOS on an earlier iPhone makes it run dreadfully. So where did you get this expectation? It's not an expectation I had.
As to the rest of your post, the gist of it is 'we don't know how it will be so let's assume the worst'. If you actually take a moment to read the developer blogs or take a look at the APIs, you'll find we actually do know quite a lot about this. People are writing software for Windows 8 right now, so plenty of people do know how compatible WP7 and WP8 are. So again, I ask you why when you obviously haven't looked into this in detail, you feel it is right to post your assumptions so confidently in contradiction of what we actually do know and can check for ourselves.
So W8 will run W7 apps. For how long? Likely W8.1 will drop that support.
That's the game MS have been playing for years. Give enough flexibility to attract the punters, then lock them in to the new changes. Once people start committing to customers on the W8 platform they will have to rewrite to new APIs to keep going.
They did this with NT years ago. To break into the server market, MS provided a POSIX layer to attract developers away from Unix land. The NT platform was attractive because it was lower cost than the SCO or whatever equivalent. The POSIX interface made it easy for vendors to move their code.
Once vendors had NT-based products, they nuked the POSIX support. Vendors had to rewrite parts of their code to use Windows APIs. The bridge was burned.
Likely the same will happen here.
There's a vicious rumour that Nokia are forcing people in their developer programme to switch from Symbian to WP or kicking them out. Not surprisingly they're deserting Nokia en-masse for iOS and Android.
Another winning strategy by Elop.
Yeah, award winning PR from them right there.
Elop: Steve, look, I've done my best, but Nokia are still shipping more Symbian than Windows....
Ballmer: !!!!
*a chair ricochets off an office wall*
Ballmer: Developers!
Elop: Developers?
Ballmer: Developers!! Make it known that anyone coding for Symbian instead of Windows is persona-non-grata. Burn them!!
Given that WP7 is effectively reaching end-of-life as a development platform, and WP8 hasn't even launched yet, these figures are hardly surprising.
The interest in Windows 8 will translate across to WP8, because there's a 90% code re-use factor for Metro apps between the two. So I would expect that once both W8 and WP8 are out in the wild, developer interest for Metro as a whole will surge.
As this is a pro-MS post, Register readers are obliged to downvote it, so off you go. And don't forget the "happy to oblige" replies too, you can't help yourselves.
There was shed loads of dev interest in .NET etc. We kept hearing people say native apps written in C++ etc would be obsolete and so on. Now, look at these days how many programs are written for windows that are native versus those written using .NET.
It's found a place with server side scripting on IIS, but actual windows programs.. not so much. (for example, my work pc the majority of apps are x86/x64 C++ written apps, there are a few java apps and I think one .NET app)
Again, you're making wild assumptions that all the devs will suddenly drop what they're doing, stop native development and switch to metro. It's wildly optimistic. Metro is geared towards touch devices and at last look metro is horrible to use with a mouse and keyboard.
Devs will go where the money is. If windows continues to only be a success on desktop and server pc's then nobody will write metro apps, they'll continue writing win32 programs.
Windows8 will be installed on 95% of all new desktops sold in Walmart.
It isn't going to be on any corporate seats.
Or are are going to make a living from home desktop users (if there are any left) buying widgets ?
That must be were all those screen-saver billionaires came from.
But they can do the same with Java right? Oh wait.
If it's not worth their time there, I don't think it would be worth their time here. If the dip happens before Windows Phone 8 comes out, it will be detrimental. There will be no momentum to carry over, right? Why else would Apple try to make each new IPhone have some backwards/forwards compatibility? If not to keep the momentum and support of apps going?
Just look at the windows development cycle. They need to keep some program legacy there, and drop it carefully. :P
Absolute cack.
I've got news for you Mark, Windows 8 is going to be released, and when it is, it wil be installed on 95% of all new x86 Desktops, Laptops, Ultrabooks out there - so if Devs can't be bothered with the "platform" (and remember, the platform for Windows 8 works across ALL devices) then they're going to lose out big time.
If they want a slice of the action, they're going to HAVE to code for it - and that means Desktops, Phones, Tablets, Laptop you name it. What Jim is trying to say is that re-coding for a different device is a piece of proverbial piss - it's been done and there are tons of demo codes samples out there and even more documentation on how to do it.
So like it or not, there are going to be millions of Windows 8 installs out there - why on earth would Devs not want to be part of that?
Exactly Phoenix50. Hit the nail on the head. Wishful thinking of Mark C Casey - like it or not Win32 is depreciated at the end of the day, so no developer is going to continue to write for a dead system unless he or she like to be so stubborn that they like to develop themselves out of existence. Writing for the WinRT system will ensure that the apps will work on ALL Windows 8 devices (and probably including Windows Phone).
You really think that even in 3 years from now their will be more machines running windows 8 and wp8 than all other windows versions? WinRT apps are not backwards compatible where as win32 is forward compatible. Even on the desktop Win8 is going to be Vista 2 or Windows ME 3. There will be no corporate refresh cycle on win8 so there goes the enterprise right there. WinRT is Silverlight all over again.
And as for win32 not running on phones or tablets that would only matter if anyone actually owned a phone or tablet running WP8 or win8 (funny how that works when you are years late to a market). As you can see they are trying to leverage their desktop to force developers to develop for WinRT but in the end all they are going to do is Vistaize (not sure of verb form here) another desktop release.
Again, the exact same thing was said about .NET. It's the future, everyone will create .NET programs, C++ written programs are doomed yada yada.
Windows 8 is more than just metro. Where is the inertia on the desktop? Is it using a touch screen or is it using a mouse and keyboard?
The reality of it is that devs can still write win32 apps and run them on Windows 8, using metro apps with a keyboard and mouse is an exercise in frustration. You can't bolt a touchscreen UI onto a desktop OS and expect users and developers to like it or use it.
Just like .NET Metro may find a niche, but developers will continue writing programs where the money is. Which on Windows is a UI for keyboards and mice. In otherwords, win32.
This has gotten somewhat off topic, so i'll reiterate a previous point. Even if magically all windows devs decide to stop writing win32 and go metro, then port their apps to WP. It still doesn't stop the fact that WP is for all intents and purposes, dead. It's a zombie platform being kept shambling about by MS money, people are not buying WP devices. Android and IOS have won.
Ah the fallacy of the easy re-compile! This is exactly the problem that Java has always had. Compiling and re-compiling an application for multiple platforms is the easy part (Java has no problem there, most Linux distros can compile on multiple architectures too).
The hard part in building an application that works on multiple form factors (desktop, tablet, phone, etc) is the UI and the interaction: you do not design an application for a desktop with a large screen and a mouse in the same way than you do for a tablet or mobile phone with a small touch screen.
So the risk is that you get a lot of devs building apps for W8 targetting the desktop; then they recompile for WP8 and realise that their app works but is a nightmare to use on a mobile phone or a tablet. At that point, they have to do the maths: is the WP8 platform big enough that it justifies spending time and money adapting the UI for those form factors? Or are they better off keeping the money and concentrating on other W8 desktop apps? The answer will differ depending on the application's target market.
If multi-form-factor support was as easy as a recompile, Java would have won the day a long time ago. the fact that it hasn't is a hint that recopiling is not the only (or even the most important) issue.
"If multi-form-factor support was as easy as a recompile, Java would have won the day a long time ago. the fact that it hasn't is a hint that recopiling is not the only (or even the most important) issue."
Oddly enough, your post is a lot of what MS published on their developer blog. Particularly this one (though also others): Scaling to Different Screens
That you can deploy the same code to multiple devices (Windows Phone 8, tablets, desktops) is important, but there are actually new APIs in Windows 8 to do things like auto-rearrange menu systems for different screen sizes, alter images based on different screen resolutions. You'd probably find the link above very interesting.
Havn't MS been making these claims for years?
Windows Phone is dead in the water, without devs making apps, they won't have users, and without users there aren't apps.
Users don't want WIndows Phone because it's a rubbish OS, and rubbish hardware specs, and they are tired of Microsoft's ever changing mobile strategy that means they get screwed over every time they buy into the current failed strategy.
While I think MS really stuck it to Nokia by announcing that WP8 won't run on phones bought today - I agree that the future looks quite a bit brighter. Late this year, people will go in stores and see the cool-looking Metro interface running identically on PCs, laptops and phones, and that I think will be pretty compelling.
Let the downvotes begin!
> Late this year, people will go in stores and see the cool-looking Metro interface running identically on PCs, laptops and phones, and that I think will be pretty compelling.
I think it will be compelling, too.
They have seen Metro on WP7 and, for the most part, been compelled to go elsewhere and buy iPhone and Android. They have seen it on preview and have, mostly, been compelled to complain about it.
With Windows Phone 8 just round the corner, who in their right mind would be buying a Windows Phone 7 at the moment.
I am not exactly sure why the "market" or Nokia or Microsoft would be expecting good sales of the current Windows Phone devices, because anyone with common sense can see they won't be selling any. Particularly as all the indicators are, that Windows Phone 7 devices are not going to be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8.
Once Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 tablets and Windows 8 for PC's hits the market, there will be a more compelling reason for people to buy Windows Phone devices, for those that want a consistent look and feel across their devices, and I fully expect Windows Phone to push RIM out of the market completely in the next few years and become the third player in the battle with Android and Apple.
I don't think things will pan out that way.
Windows Phone 7 is dead to me. I don't really know if it's a good OS, or a bad OS. All I know, is that I can't get any apps for it. In fact, the El Reg app is a rare beast - one that's offered over iOS, Android and WP7(.5).
With such a dearth of apps out there - and no sign'ts of it improving, I can't see WP8 appealing to anyone. The only market segment *might* be corporates. But I can't see senior staff being impressed when they realise they'd have to carry 2 phones, to keep the apps they like from their iPhones.
Isn't needing 2 of the same devices the new way forward for Microsoft? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1zxDa3t0fg
Always cracks me up that - the way he proudly explains he can run internet explorer, with a confident wave of the arm to the audience. Which when he does, immediately bricking it. Fantastic. And certainly worth pointing out again and again. And again.
If only they'd invested more of the $5 million per day they extort from Android manufacturers into this, eh? Or did it all go on the $450 needed to get a phone box of gullibles to buy their $50 comedy handset?
I can't find Words for Friends, which is a shame, but not a show-stopper.
Other than that, I have Evernote and Dropbox and Outlook and Office and several astronomy apps and lot of games and various Compass / Altitude things, and a jogging pedometer, and full (free) spoken GPS navigation and a very funky mapping programme that has bike maps and 1920s OS maps which is entertaining. And Kindle reader, a "free" ebook reader, PDF reader, a bunch of shopping apps. And Spotify and internet radio with my favourite french radio stations. I don't know if Instagram or FourSquare are available, I've never looked.
It's all down to individuals ...
No app to access my bank account (one for iOS and Android)
No BBC news app
No Chiltern Railway app
No NCP app
No National Rail app
all things I would use in my work life. So, no matter how fantabulous WP8 is, I can't get into WP7
Mike, a BBC App has been there since almost immediately after WP7 was released. Though when I installed it, it appears to be a scraper from a 3rd party developer group and not BBC at all, either that or the devname was poorly chosen by the BBC people.
> "No app to access...[etc]"
I'd wager that 90% of those things can be done on the web. How did we get this absurd situation in which both developers and consumers think we need to install/require an install of an app to access a mobile web site?
Multicore ARM chips are not just for performance, they are for saving battery usage. A single core 1.5MHz may well be able to idle at 25% or so but a 4 core 1MHz can shut down 3 cores completely and then idle that one left running at 25% so that overall it uses only 7-10%. It then only needs to switch in cores as required for the workload, the 4th may only use battery power very rarely.
More sophisticated SoCs may have asymmetric cores so that one runs at 0.3MHz so the idle savings on this one is even greater.
See, it's not that hard to understand.
What is required is a sophisticated OS that can utilize the hardware correctly rather than a "shit OS" that has no clue at all about more than one thing.
I said "shit-slow". And having gone over Dalvik's garbage collector twice when trying to get decent performance out of a mobile app, I stand by that. It's terrible. As for genuine multitasking over tombstoning?
To be frank, except for operations like playing music or receive data as a stream, I don't see the point on a mobile device. Say you fire up your El Reg app, follow a link, switch to the browser, play a sound file in the browser. Is there really any point in the El Reg app being anything other than tombstoned?
I'll agree with your theory about energy saving when you get three days without a recharge from a Galaxy S3. Given that we got that time from a Lumia 800 on battery life tests, it seems only fair.
> As for genuine multitasking over tombstoning?
The reason that Skype is not useful on WP7 is that you need to run it in foreground in order for it to pick up calls.
Well actually that applies to any app that wants to run in background, it won't. MS does have background stuff for WP7 but it seems that it is about the same level as TSRs were on MS-DOS.
> And having gone over Dalvik's garbage collector twice
Perhaps the secret to performance is 'don't make the GC run'. Have you tried serial reusability ?
So why is the battery life on every Android phone pretty much the same as every WinPhone???? Oh yeah, that will be beacuse it is actually the screen that uses all the power......
Seriously, there should be a stupidity test to weed out the likes of the above poster.
No, the biggest power drain is actually the cell radio. There's a reason why talktime differs from standby time. The screen rates pretty highly on power draw though, with the chip being way down the list UNLESS your OS performs badly.
And to Richard Plinston, I agree that Skype is not useful on WP7. However, I consider VOIP to be an edge case, given that voice calls can be made and received without it. It would be nice if it ran properly and I hope that it will with 7.8 or 8 but it's not a dealbreaker at the consumer level.
Developers don't care about Windows Phone 7 because they are already stoked for Windows Phone 8. They know that the new codebase will make things easier and better for developers and the synergy the codebase will have with Windows 8 means that people who were exclusively developing Desktop Apps may be tempted to dip into the mobile market and vice versa, so it's win win with Microsoft.
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will excel the Windows everywhere idea and help it become a reality. In 18 months Apple will be toast they are running out of steam and boy is it showing. People are growing stale of the iPhone it hasn't really changed in three years and the screen size is being left in the dirt by it's rivals with every passing month.
As for Android people will grow sick of the fragmentation the malware and the spyware and that's just the stuff that Google is doing not forgetting the nasties lurking in the un-policed marketplace.
Devs are struggling to make money on Android and any royalties they do get they even have issues getting paid to them. Microsoft has a history of being the #1 OS and now they are heading towards merging their two platforms so they are closely aligned the developers will follow. Just you watch
I'm sorry, the boat has already sailed, and Microsoft were not on it. You're living in a dreamworld.
Microsoft is the #1 OS because it was the first to get out into the mass-market, and because it was what everyone already had it's momentum made it unassailable. This is also precisely why it is already too late for it to recover from it's dismal, near-total failure to recognise the rapid growth of the mobile market.
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unless you are knocking out games, most apps are going to be being written more and more in HTML5 anyway with stuff like PhoneGap/Dojo or wrapped up in Worklight.
If you ARE writing natively cross platform, you'd have to find a pretty good business case to do a WM version these days - android, iPhone and blackberry (coming up way back in the rear) would be your first choices most times I'd have thought. Certainly my company has never been asked by a client to do a WM app since WinCE in the early 2000s.
the guy saying 'if you are doing windows desktop you can do windows mobile is based on the horribly mistaken (imho) microsoft approach that you run the same apps on both (not same TYPE of apps, but the same actual app)- there is no evidence of that whatsoever as far as I can see.
A deveoper can code an "app" for a Windows 8 Desktop, and then port that app to a Windows 8 phone. It's really not that complicated. You CAN run the same App, and that App can utilise cross-platform configuration to deliver the exact same experience, no matter what device you are using. This has been demoed most recently with the new Microsoft Office 2013 - web-based apps allow you to stop working at your desktop, then pul up the document on your phone and carry on from where you left off - it's the same app and the same data, just on a different device.
Lumia sales are down 19 % over same quarter last year. Anyone (anyone?) waiting for a Windows Phone device will wait for Windows 8 to appear. The existing Lumia devices are basically obsolete already and people know it. This would explain the heavy discounting going on to attempt to shift them.
The best the existing devices can expect is a 7.8 refresh which reskins the front end and some other minor enhancements and compatibility improvements.
I am currently working on a 3D game using Unity3D.
It would be impossible to implement it in HTML.
With one click I can publish it to Windows desktop, OS X, iOS or Android.
I can with similar ease publish to web browsers, provided the user is prepared to run Flash or a Unity browser plug-in.
What's missing from this list is Windows Phone 8.
Why should I go to considerable addition porting effort for a tiny market?
Hopefully MS and Unity will get together and sort this out.
The decision as to whether or not to address a particular market is not simple.
Let's say it takes time Tx to port software for market X, with an expected profit of Px,
and time Ty to develop new software for market Y, with expected profit of Py.
If you decide to port software from market Y to address market X, then that means you expect
Px > (Tx/Ty) * Py.
For that expression to be true, Tx should be as small as possible.
If we assume that Px is the expected profit from selling in the Windows Phone 8 market, and Py is the total expected profit from selling in every other market, then I am not convinced that the current value of Tx is sufficiently small.
With the WP7, once you're published that's pretty much job done - assuming you've done a decent job of writing your app and it does everything your users need it to. Maybe you'll put out an update after a few weeks/months. Maybe not. But ultimately, you can get on with writing your next app, and making profit off of that as well.
Android... well, I've yet to find an app developer who makes a decent profit off of the weeks of continual tweaking and updating to support the particular variants of OS/handset that they haven't been able to test on before launch. And come to think of it, I've yet to meet an android owner who was willing to actually pay for apps...
There are many many .NET developers out there who are capable of writing phone apps. If you can write any .NET application you can write WP apps because it's straight forward and the tooling is 1st class. It takes a lot of time and effort to write an app and get it to a point where you are able to publish it. This is true of any platform.
I wrote the most simple app I could think of and published it just so I could say I have published an app and let me tell you it took me months because even simple apps are complex when you look at the detail; and the submission process is lengthy.
So that's casual / hobby devs covered.
Now lets talk about companies that write apps for windows phone. Well the market share is not there yet for WP so I'm not surprised that the platform is not a priority.
Journalists have mortgages to pay...
Survey, pointless.
Neil Griffiths
Professional full time .NET developer.
@Joerg: soo many LOLz. procedural code is a sack of shit. If you had managed to crawl out of the coding dark ages and managed to adopt TDD and ATDD then you'd probably evaluate languages differently. building a healthy code base in c# is a slam dunk with how easy it is to do things like TDD, Dependency Injection.
I bet you spend half of your dev time in a debugger.
Clearly you don't have a clue about how to program properly.
You want libraries with everything done for you with no care for any real optimization.
Jave and .NET just can't allow anyone to do some proper low-level optimization like C/C++ and Objective-C do. Also injecting in-line assembly inside Java and .NET even if with some tricks could be achieved (at least on Java some hacks allow something like that with still very limited access) it's just an added waste of time that won't result in any serious optimization anyway.
Don't be an idiot - I'm mid 30s, develop in C/C++/MFC - have experience in both .NET and Java - I've essentially done it all (and well). I pick the right tools for the right job, and to insult others for picking their tools because their tools don't suit YOUR needs is stupid and childish. Grow up.
"And come to think of it, I've yet to meet an android owner who was willing to actually pay for apps..."
I'll concur with that, but I'm not an app developer I'm an android user and haven't needed to pay for any apps, if I can get everything for free (ok ad supported) why would I pay, why would I switch from 'free' android to WP(7/8/9...) or IOS ?
Freetard always....
I can't wait for Windows Phone 8. As a developer I am sure I am not the only one that have been waiting for the right OS and features to arrive from Microsoft, along with the controllability, integration and cross-platform features we have been waiting for - WP7 didn't cut it (and nor for that matter does iOS and Android). WP8 and W8 on the other hand - I can't wait! Bring it on!
Window Phone only offers a subset of .NET and HTML. It's very hard to port code to the platform and I expect that's exactly what most devs want to do. It's basically a full rewrite which is a lot of effort. Porting iPhone to Android isn't easy but if your code was C you could do it with some abstraction, probably keeping 90% of the code common.
Assuming WP gets C/C++ (proper C/C++ not managed CLI) it might become a bit more attractive.
So odd. I love my 900. From my cold dead hands... played with a Galaxy S III the other day: A nerdy phone for phone nerds. The 900 is slick and sexy. Less noise. looking forward to WP 7.8. this winter will be critical for nokia. if WP8 doesn't crack it open for them I think they will be in trouble.
A quad core wp8 phone would be killer.
A quad core wp8 phone would have precious little to do with its cores. WP7, WP8 and even Windows 8 suspend metro apps when they are not in the foreground. So aside from what's in the foreground it just has the system processes to maintain. So perhaps a dual core might benefit the system if the foreground app is hogging CPU but quad core wouldn't have much to do unless apps spawned off a bunch of threads.
Well, no one knows, how much extra favorable votes iOS will get as there is also a raffle of iPad 2 among the participants of the survey. This level of biasing the results by lottery mistake is a shame to this survey. Secondly the study reports demographics of the user base of the service, not demographics of the participants to this survey.
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